I’m new to Castaneda and discovered this sub relatively recently. Compared to r/occult and r/magick , one of the things that caught my attention was how practitioners in this sub claim to be able to do fantastical forms of magic which you see in fiction. This is in contrast to how it’s commonly perceived by magicians today that those types of magic are impossible as real magic is subtle and not fantastical in its own effects.
Even for magicians who believe those types of magic are possible, they would say it require years of mental cultivation, similar to what monks and yogis have to undergo before they can do things like levitation, walking on water etc. but the practitioners in this sub seems to give off an impression that this can be achieved more quickly compared to the years that yogis/monks have to dedicate themselves to mental cultivation.
So a common criticism to such claims would be if those fantastical forms of magic are possible, why has it not gotten the attention of mainstream media and scientists? Would like to hear your thoughts to this criticism and why it’s common for magicians today to deny the he possibility of fantastical forms of magic
103 Comments
The short answer is no one here wants your money. The magic is in your face real. Who cares about what the pretenders say?
Thank you for your reply 🙏 what feats are you able to perform as a practitioner if you don’t mind sharing?
Walk through solid walls in your physical body, wide awake.
Levitate light objects (2 ounces).
Float up into the air 2 feet.
Leap through outer space, to land on planets outside our galaxy, in your physical body.
My witch enemy Cholita can raise me up in a parking lot 1 to 2 feet, with one finger. When she's angry or unhappy about the results of a shopping spree.
We get to be friends with real, fully visible spirits, 2 billion years old, who can bend water and even roll objects to get your attention.
They like chapsticks. Must have a high water content.
We get to remote view anywhere in time and space, with our eyes wide open. Fully awake. Completely sober.
And then on a good day, we can zip into them to travel back in time anywhere you can locate.
We get to be in 2 places at the same time, using our "double".
A real being which can even work a second job for you.
We get to manifest entire freeway overpasses in our practice room, as real as anything you see in your normal life, and you can even stage truck accidents using your ally as the driver, just to see if it's possible.
I used to get mine to drive off the side of the northbound freeway out of Tokyo, and plunge to a fiery death. I've visited Japan a bit.
But they don't like dying in a horrible truck fire, so they'll take revenge.
You can visit heaven or God, or cause a crack to split open in your bedroom through which hell is fully visible.
You can fill your room with 5 inches of water, to use for specific magic you've learned. I like to go fishing for magical creatures.
Or just make a little pink stream, to splash your feet around in.
Nightly. Or daily if you prefer.
We aren't "one time event" yogis, writing books so we can steal from others the way that con artist Yogananda did.
You get to do this for HOURS, every single day if you can find the time.
But like I said, we don't have any motivation to help the lazy learn.
We don't earn money from this, like everyone else pretending to have magic.
I left out a lot of things.
There's too much to even remember it all in a short time.
These are phenomenal feats. Are there any video evidences showing the demonstrations of such powers?
You sound a bit deranged. If you're new to Castaneda, that means you read the books, correct? If you did, you know Don Juan's opinion on video recordings... If not, you're not actually new to Castaneda, you're just a dilettante coming here to stir the pot (and I think your internal dialogue is telling you that this can't be real).
I haven’t read his books. As mentioned in my post, my curiosity to this sub lies in the extraordinary claims that practitioners make of the feats that they are able to do. Furthermore, it’s common for charlatans to exist in the spiritual community so is it too much to ask for evidence of amazing magical abilities?
Maybe you can enlighten me on what Don Juan feels about video recordings
Then you're not new to Castaneda, you're not even at the first step! You literally are a dilettante.
Maybe what you mean by being new is different from how I define it. Theres no need to throw accusations.
There is no accusation.
Dilettante: a person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge. That's you (with regards to Castaneda).
You are assuming that I would not dedicate my time and efforts into Castaneda. One of the respondents here say this is a path that requires substantial time and effort. It’s only reasonable that I would want to know if this path is worth the time and effort invested just like how in mundane situations, you have to know beforehand if something is worth the time and effort before going into it
Is there anything else worth the effort besides magic?
At the moment, magic is a personal endeavor I wish to pursue, my goals might change in the future
Haha yep! You are just looking for attention then.
Sure……
Don't worry about it. Maybe come back when you're ready.
I think I would ask others who are more helpful, approachable and respectful in the sub 😊
More attention seeking :)
Do the practices and see what happens or don't do the practices and leave.
Get lost butthead...
Sorry, I was hanging out with Cholita last night. That tends to make me think more like she does.
Except she wouldn't say "butthead". It would be far worse.
On t e way back, she destroyed an entire church!
But we forgot to record it for you.
Sorry.
If Cholita is your witch enemy, why are you hanging out with her?
History repeats.
In the books, it was La Catalina. Attacking Carlos.
The thing you don't understand is, there is no reality.
No time, no space, no physical matter.
Physicists don't disagree with that these days, admitting that what we perceive is just a side effect of the real thing.
They also agree that reality is subject to being altered through the process of observing it.
And particles can react to other particles many light years away, with no seeming connection.
Indicating, space isn't what we believe either.
Sorcery is just the process of learning what actually produces reality, and how to change what is being produced.
Thus you want "proof", but that goes against the very nature of reality.
You want us to force your version of reality to be broken, and insert a piece from another reality, just so you can decide if it's worth your effort to put in any work and learn.
That'll never happen.
In fact, it's hopeless for you to learn so you might as well go elsewhere to suck up attention.
The problem for ordinary men is, to go from the reality they were born into, they need some trace of a new one to gaze into.
Using the analogy of a mountain, they need at least a tiny "rabbit trail", if they want to explore further into the mountain range.
Carlos called that "the intent of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico".
They created all this before agriculture, money, writing systems, and cities were invented.
Well... There was a writing system, but likely only 2 could read it in their entire population.
So they had no motivation to make up nonsense. There was no one to cheat out of money, with fake magic. No cities filled with sad gullible people to cheat, and no way to write down imaginary musings in the first place.
They were very similar to the Jedi (who are based on our magic), in that all they did was take youngling apprentices, and any further contact with other sorcerers or with the general population, was just a kind of malicious competition to see who could go the furthest discovering magic.
We follow their rabbit trails.
One of them is, the type of sorcerer I am often has an enemy witch like Cholita.
It just happens automatically, even if you don't want it to.
If you read the books, you'll become aware of it.
And if you consider that there's actually no reality at all, but rather "replays" of past realities which can be triggered to flow, I ended up triggering the enemy witch version of the path of learning.
Not to mention, Carlos set this up himself.
Which is fine by me.
Cholita is the most powerful among us.
But also totally mad and usually very angry.
Anyway, do go away.
You're wasting your time in here, and really have been sent to attack whether you realize it or not.
You're dominated by the spirit of greed and profiteering.
I don’t get the hostility from you, I mean no ill will. I think I will stick to asking others who are more approachable and friendlier for help
You can read the "Are You A Bad Player?" section, if you like.
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/bad_players/
Actually I'm trying to help you, but you can't see it.
And you're confusing this place with a place where people are hoping to take your money.
And so everyone is very "helpful".
Since there's no other place with real magic as this one has, you have no way to know if this is unusual.
It's not.
The hostility is the result of 5 years of bad men attacking here, and learning that the sooner you make them go away, the better for all.
Unchecked, they'd rapidly destroy this place. Which is their unknown to them, goal.
Literally. Clearly. Anyone who's been around a few years will tell you that.
You have ZERO chance to ever learn this, according to all of our accumulated experience with new people.
Even the ones who are polite and don't make bizarre demands, only work out 1 in 100 times.
Due to the laziness of human beings.
Besides, you've got some other motivation going on, other than actually learning.
Book hopes, perhaps.
But who knows, because "bad players" are never honest men.
This is of course what all sorcerers in our lineage have observed throughout time.
So it's not just me.
It's at least 16 generations of seers in our lineage, who learned this.
We made a simple map which lists the known ones in the lower right.
Out in a tunnel in the spirit world, there's a painting of each one, lined up along the entrance to where you can live with them for millions of years, if you're willing to give up living here.
I've seen Lujan.
The witch Taisha has also seen these paintings, but she ditched us because our community was so hopeless.
She saw no way to help us learn, and all we did was drain her.
Like you're doing.
Dan tends to be more hostile for the sake of ensuring this subreddit doesn't end up filled with bad actors. It's very difficult to read people's intentions, especially when they don't have any past history of working with castaneda or this subreddit. You are going to have to just start reading and practicing and only worry about posting/commenting when you have advice or questions that cannot be dealt with in the subreddits chat. I highly recommend you focus on reading the about section of the subreddit, and pick up a free pdf of all of carlos castanedas books from the audiovisual section. That's a good start!
Thank you for the recommendation and the advice 🙏🙏🙏
Eh magic's overrrated anyway. What's going on here I think is outside the bounds of ordinary old magic, and so it can't be bought and sold to media and scientists.
Which practice would you be referring to?
Inner silence innit.
i've participated broadly in religious and occult stuff and came up empty on all counts.
buddhism is the only religion or practice that helped me, but psychologically, it did nothing otherwise. there's no magic to it. it's a sophisticated eastern form of stoicism really. useful but not truly spiritual.
i am disturbed by claims that Casteneda was a fraud or cult leader but there is a sense and promise to the stuff discussed here that makes it seem like there's something to it. i don't know. but it's the last place to look. i feel like if there is no magic or sorcery to be had here, in this, then it truly doesn't exist anywhere.
I’ve heard of such criticisms too about castenda. But tbh even if Castenda is a fraud but if his methods works, that’s what that matters.
How has your experiences with his practices been like?
i haven't really put in enough effort yet to judge. this path seems to require a lot of dedication and time. but i have had some extremely wild lucid dreaming experiences for some reason since looking into this stuff.
The preeminent issue with those subs you mention, or other forms of "magick" is that they can't reliably move their assemblage points in substantial ways.
And that is reducable to the unwillingness to undertake the brutal task of silencing the inner dialogue, rather then merely alter it into a more pleasing narrative.
The same issue that has decimated Cleargreen (the "official" group that Carlos setup and that has fallen prey to the same forces that stripped magic from other world religion).
And that issue boils down to one of **INTENT.
See, the price of being visible in society as a "spiritual system" is having to been seen by others as playing by the rules...and thus be socially acceptable.
And since those rules as dictated by the imposed inner dialogue, are what keep the assemble point fixed here, where there is no allowed/tolerated actual magic ✨, they can't possibly succeed at being anything but subtle.
You can't be true to the underground/radical/rebel spirit, if you're endorsed by and seeking to be validated in the eyes of society.
Actively seeking/expecting to be paid in human attention or in actual currency.
In some ways it's not fair, because all such "subtle" systems have originated and developed during the past few thousand years where it's highly unlikely they were to maintain any real freedom from these shackles/encumbrances, unless they remained a truly secret cloister...unknown to society at large (like don Juan's lineage was, prior to Castaneda's efforts).
And thus unknown to any of us!
While we here have the 5,000 or so years of pre-Mesopotamian intent (activity, in this context), whose potency can't be assailed.
That's why Carlos reiterated, over and over on his deathbed, the importance of remaining true) aligned to the "intent of the sorcerer/seers of ancient Mexico."
I guess it’s also how charlatans are common in the spiritual community that lead to demands for evidences to amazing claims. As a practitioner, do you have video evidences on the magical feats you are able to perform?
This technology doesn't project that far into the realm of matter.
In effect, it invalidates matter! Thus no optical evidence is (usually) forthcoming.
And during the times that it does, stopping to film it would demolish that practitioner's relationship with intent...because a precedent of attention seeking would have been thus set.
And since we're not doing any of this on our own, the forces at large would then give them more human attention, and less actual magic....making it even less likely to be filmed.
It's a catch 22!
Thank you for the explanation 🙏 this means that filming the act would cause a disruption in the magic?
I will try to explain it
normal people = first attention (everyday world)
people from this reddit who got to the level of doing magic (move A.P quite far away) = second attention
The first attention turns the world around us into a solid and concrete world, a world of objects that makes us forget our condition as luminous and mortal beings, makes us believe that there is only solid/concrete truth of objects, and that everything that escape that are hallucinations etc.
When entering the second attention, you silence your internal dialogue therefore judgments, identifications and others are eliminated, to delve into the mysterious and unknown, you eliminate the solid/concrete, like in dreams you don't think, you just act.
recording or showing Irl, real magic to others who are in the first attention, would only make those others look for "reasons" and try to make it as solid as possible, contrary to what those in the second attention are looking for.
(in the best of cases, in other cases/times this can make you persecuted because people fear you, since they fear everything that is a mystery, and then simply: to the bonfire hahaha)
yes
i feel like things like this you need to prove to yourself or it's unbelievable. video evidence can so easily be faked. even if i saw somebody do something seemingly magical it might be a trick. i've seen magicians do things i couldn't figure out but knew it was somehow a trick.
the only way to know is to experience it/do it yourself. or you really shouldn't believe it.
That’s a good point you made there. What are your own experiences like doing Castaneda’s practices?
like i said, i'm a noob/seeker too. i really haven't been in the circumstance to do the practices justice to judge. it takes a lot of work and dedication. i have too much on my plate/too many responsibilities/too much interference from other people to really do the work that's needed. but i have had some pretty crazy lucid dreaming experiences that have been related to looking into this stuff.
Oh yea sorry I forgot you previously responded to me 🙏
Hello. I'm back. Dan, I'm sorry if I upset you. I am no longer a Muslim. I am an atheist. I started working today. I tried my best to remove all inner dialogue and fantasys. I was successful. Except... earworm! The damn thing can't be deleted! Do I have to delete it?How?
Think you replied to the wrong thread, he’s not the OP here
You don't have to delete it until you think it's interfering with you. Then you'll naturally want to delete it. A lot of things can happen just by hooking to intent, so simply wanting to delete it can be enough, but it will take TIME.
Just do darkroom and enjoy whatever sights you can get it and if you want to experience more, you'll need to think of what is keeping you from it.
There's no magic in Buddhism or Yoga. It's just pretending.
If you learn the real thing, you'll understand why.
However, keep in mind that this isn't a business. No one makes money from real magic.
That's impossible.
So no one in here cares if you learn or not.
We can't afford to pamper anyone. It actually makes magic harder, when your attention is focused on worrying about someone too lazy to become serious and gain the amazing magic that's available to all humans for free.
Only 1 in 100 who subscribe here, actually put in an effort to learn it.
Despite it not being any more difficult than learning to play the Trumpet well.
Or to learn to surf well enough to compete.
People are used to fake magic like Buddhism or Hinduism, where you never actually do any real work.
You just sit with your eyes closed and grin. Dreaming of lording it over others as a "master" some day.
There are many problems when it comes to this, I'll talk about the main ones (in my opinion).
The intent of proving to others does not lead to magic. This comes down to "what behaviours you need to do in order to achieve magic?" Magic has a price, and the price is work. This work comes in the form of certain actions (the practices), behaviours (forcing silence throughout the day, saving up energy, being consistant with your practices), etc. To do that, you need to have an unbending intent, which is basically a desire that can't be "shaken" or "tainted" by anything. This intent only can be done when you don't have opposite intents against it. That's when it comes the intent of proving to others. This intent has been proven to be a burden that goes against the intent of doing real magic. It's important to know that it's not the same as Don Juan and the lineage did, they didn't want to "prove to the world", they were following demands from infinity itself. if you read the books, just remember how many passages of Don Juan stating he was waiting for a signal from infinity.
Another thing is the perceived world. Everything you perceive is created by you. This happens because of the Assemblage Point. What usually determines the Assemblage Point position (I.E. what you perceive) is the inner monologue. Our inner monologue is fixated in this mundane reality, where there is no magic. If a sorcerer move his assemblage point enough, he can perceive magical things, all while other won't, beucase their assemblage point is not in the position to perceive it. If two sorcerers happen to be together and with their assamblage point in the same position, they would certainly perceive the same thing (although the representation of the thing can vary between individuals). For example Inorganic Beeings. The same one can look different for each person. Also, rationality plays an important role here, if you read the books, remember how much Carlos would literaly deny hard proof in front of him because of his rationality. Let's say for example, an IOB move a physical object. That's a proof. A sorcerer's rationality will accept this, but a normal person's won't. I myself had a hard time the first two times that happened to me. "It's me moving", "there's an explanation", "it's not possible". If a regular person would see it, their rationality would make it so mundane in their perspective, that they wouldn't accept a magical explanation. Most wouldn't even notice that a physical object moved, it would not be possible for them to perceive it, rationality has that much power, it really can filter out many things from our perception that do not fit into the mundane narrative. Maybe if you think about it in sillence, without rational explanations, you will remember some phenomena impossible to explain that your mind just filtered out.
So, to wrap things up, you can have all the proofs you want to any degree you want, but it's kinda of a waste of time to try to prove it for other people, and also it will most likely make you miserable and with no magic in the end. Remember that to prove to Carlos, Don Juan needed speciall techniques, powers, rituals, and so on, things we don't have access nowadays, and still it was a life long goal.
So is my entire sense of physical perception all coming from internal dialogue?
A sort of "I am here, in this room" dialogue, though maybe not worded?
Not entire. You still have a meat container until you successfully find another one. But you can loosen this container's hold a bit.
"find another one" - shapeshifting?
No, "the earth as a container", inorganic being's realm, become a tree. Stuff that happens after the death of your physical body.
It's more like a ship, an ancor and the sea floor (or even the general region the ship is on). We are ships, we are meant to explore and navigate and infinite sea, but for some reason that I still don't know, we are ancored to a specific place. In this analogy, the sea floor is this world, the ancor is the inner monologue and we are the ship.
The body really seems to be a filter of some sort, one designed for survival. For example, there are many "types of light" we don't see just because we don't need it for survival. We only see a narrow band of the light spectrum because that's enough for our survival. Other animals see different bands because they need more or less of it to survive. We could use magic to perceive it though, being through shape shifting or other means, because as luminous creatures of perception, we don't really have a limit to what we can perceive.
Also, there's many other viable bodies we could inhabit, what we call Cyclic Beeings. The thing is, you'd still need go get rid of the ancor to go there. There's even the risk of getting stuck there if you stay too much, as some people here believe. I myself didn't do that yet, so I can't say much about it.
I don’t really agree that providing evidence is a waste of time. There are many charlatans in the spiritual community, for eg. People claiming that they can raise the dead back to life. Should I believe those claims just because I was told so?
Obviously no, you shouldn't really believe anything just because it was told so. The problem is, as I said, we don't actually have the "tools" needed to prove it to you (a nagual, mainly, someone that can move you assemblage point for you). Carlos was the last one we had, and I don't remember if he was even capable of doing the nagual blow as Don Juan did, people here may correct me on this one.
But the good news is: it doesn't take much for you to prove it for yourself. It doesn't take much work to start to see results (the purple puffs being the first ones), and once you do, you start to get that feeling of "it's happening exactly as they said here, maybe it'll really be as they say later on". The J Curve diagram happens exactly like it's described.
Thank you for the constructive response 🙏 there’s lots of resources in the wiki page but where should I start if I want to test out if Castenada’s fantastical magic is real?
Ideally we recommend to do the magical passes in a darkroom if you can afford to make an entire room fully dark. Most people use a type of blindfold though, I myself taped out a swimming mask with black tape, for example.
You can start with these passes here.
Learn them until you can do it without having to think about details, at that point you'll probably be able to see the purple puffs fairly quickly.
Also, the most important thing is to force silence during the practice. That's why you need to learn the passes to the point where you don't even need to think about it, because then you cam focus 100% on silence.
I also recommend forcing silence during the day as a "strength training". That'll make you better at forcing it during the practice.
At first, as a beginner, silence for you will be measured mainly as no thoughts, no images (of your own, some images come for themselves), no sounds, nothing. There are many sensations that you get used to that will indicate progress. Later on, you measure silence mainly by results, as you'll get them faster.
Alright thanks for the advice 🙏
It seems to me, after a quick glance at your reddit history OP, that the criticisms you speak of are actually your own criticisms being played off as an entire group's ( https://www.reddit.com/r/occult/comments/1clrmd6/comment/l2x313f/ ).
So, it is not "they would say..." - it is you. You would say. YOU are the critic defining these parameters of validity.
I am close with a previous moderator from r/magick and they would never say such things. Then again, they also eventually left that group because it was so hopeless with the constant influx of "me, me, me" newbies who weren't interested to do actual work and learn for themselves (a similar problem that arises here).
Your assumptions will predetermine your findings, especially if you are focused on disingenuous intent and blue-line proof rather than on sincere learning of occult matters. This is a sliver of the essence of discernment.
That comment was made before discovering this sub. If you do not believe me look at the responses of these 2 threads that I made in those forums in the past. You see that many of them do not hold to the notion that fantastical forms of magic are possible.
https://www.reddit.com/r/occult/s/CmXvIYQO3v
if you don't mind, how did you find yourself on this sub?
Hmm? An interesting inquiry, but how best to explain... Let's try this:
The sorcery taught by Castaneda was introduced to me at a young age (\~10) due to the influence of witches who were his peers but are no longer around. About 4 years ago, I was alerted to this sub's existence. After some brief interaction, my focus went elsewhere. Until about 2-3 months ago, when a series of omens forced me to return to this sub. Since then, I am impressed by how the group has managed to build cohesion and deepen the resources available to others - much in thanks to Dan, Techno, Juann, and the other mods. Thus, I figure I might participate more actively in response to the sincere efforts being practiced by many here. That is how I find myself on this sub.
another question if you don't mind, what areas of the more conventional occult are you most involved in? for me it has been Golden Dawn/Thelema/Qabalah/Western occultism. it seems like most people here dismiss any other "paths" to sorcery & i'm sympathetic to that because i didn't find much success in more conventional occult philosophies/practices but i'm still open to it. open to anything really that can bring me something tangible.
to be clear, i'm not even really looking for results in the way of material goals. most of all i just want to know if/that there's something beyond this seemingly material mundane existence. it's more knowledge than power that i seek.
If it is knowledge you seek over power, then carefully define what is meant by "knowledge" and "power". Knowledge of experience is different than the knowledge of books. If you mean the former, then that requires power.
As Emergency-Total mentioned, it is not about dismissal. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that this is required for the efficacy of this sorcery. The paradigms you mentioned are not sorcery. If anything, they are wizardry. A subtle but important difference (as any D&D player knows). Here, there is no nice and fluffy "all paths lead to the same destination"; "all journeys reach the ultimate conclusion"; "all trails end at the mountain's peak". When it comes to sorcery, the wrong trail taken can lead to wasted effort and a literal dead-end.
Intent is very sensitive and highly reactive. Intent is not your intentions. This sorcery is "the intent of the Sorcerers of Ancient Mexico" and specifically, the Olmecs.
To answer your question, I am not involved with any conventional occultism.
Only the unconventional.
well, i seek both, but acquiring spiritual? knowledge is more important to me than being able to cast spells to make more money. that's just what i was trying to convey. i do understand i need power to acquire power to acquire knowledge.
a lot of people i know are concerned with magick insofar as they can attain material goals with it. i don't fault them for it and that's a nice bonus but it's not my fundamental aim here. i just want/need to know life is more than this mundane physical existence.
can you expand on what you consider unconventional occultism if you don't mind? my knowledge/experience is golden dawn/thelema/qabala/wicca and the like. fairly conventional.
spiritual??? > $$$
power <=> knowledge
+material goals*
*=nice bonus
JUST want/need to KNOW
LIFE > mundane physical existence
I see. When it comes to unconventional occultism, it isn't something shared through the same methods as the conventional. Thus, part of the distinction between the two. The closest perspective is the tapestry underneath it all. What binds every honorable attempt of any occult system is the underlying presence of raw real magic having been experienced by at least one. A presence which has been layered and obfuscated by several generations so that the threads are no longer visible- and now, rarely spoken about with sincerity. People are far too concerned with bickering about the patterns of weaves. Hmm... I am a fan of RAW's Reality Tunnels. But only because they're tunnels and I enjoy a good coincidance.
What experiences led you to consider Castaneda? Were they conventional experiences? Or is it only a hope of something more? of something greater out there? A wish and a prayer and nothing more?
forgive me for a long story, i hope you don't mind.
i've always had a deep yearning for the spiritual? i'm not sure if i'm getting the words right or articulating myself right but i'll try. i've been consumed with the existence of God since my youth. i was raised Christian and took it very seriously but my enthusiasm for it ultimately led to the downfall of my faith. the more i studied the bible, scholarly material, related philosophy, the more doubt crept in ultimately to the destruction of my faith.
i didn't give up just yet and i thought maybe spiritual truth (for want of a better term) could be found elsewhere if not in mainstream religion. i tried various churches, sects, even what some consider cults like Jehovah Witnesses or Mormons. i still felt empty. God's presence was nowhere to be felt. i received no omens or signs when i asked.
i then went searching in the occult. i got quite excited by the Qabalah for a time then further research into that led me to ultimately feeling it was empty too. central texts like the Zohar are likely forgery/make believe. the rest is borrowed from Greek/neo-platonic philosophy which is metaphysical speculation. Gematria is too non-specific, you will find what you're looking for if you look hard enough but it's not constrained enough to be useful.
i tried eastern philosophy, various forms of hindu and buddhist systems. buddhism gave me psychological benefits but that was it. i still can't wrap my head around the idea of no-self in buddhism. i don't really want nirvana. i want my flame to burn, i want more fuel for that fire, not for it to be extinguished.
my first encounter with Castenda was the book "the art of dreaming". at the time i was a very hard atheist after all my attempts to seek the divine had failed so miserably and i had basically arrived at a modern scientific/materialist worldview, reluctantly though.
anyway, i read this book and it blew my mind. it punched a hole through my scientific/materialist worldview. it opened my eyes anew to the possibility of spirituality (again, for want of a better term). i then had a strange dream. i got called on my cellphone, i picked up the phone, something spoke to me in a language i still don't understand. i then in a sense "woke up" in the dream. i had control. i then remembered something i read in the book (find your hands) and i looked down and stared at my open palms. i did it. all of a sudden i was wrenched from the ground and i started accelerating upward towards the sky, through the atmosphere, into space, and i panicked. i then stopped accelerating and started slowly drifting down towards the earth to where i landed gently.
ever since then i've had the ability to lucid dream to an incredible degree. it's felt like i've visited different/alternative worlds, even waking up as myself in slightly familiar but different surroundings. sometimes i know i'm dreaming, other times it's so vivid i'm not aware it's a dream but i have conscious control. i've had discussions with dream characters, some of which seem like tricksters, that are quite wild.
these could be just dreams. maybe i'm just naturally a good lucid dreamer. but these experiences alone are why i'm drawn to Casteneda. they are closest to results that i've ever got. they fit in with the general framework.
i started to read more of the books, more about Carlos but ended up very discouraged when i learned Carlos was probably a (academic) fraud and cult leader of sorts.
if it weren't for those experiences i would have dismissed the whole thing entirely but these ideas got me the closest to results i've ever had. so i'm still here.
Why do you care if he was an "academic fraud" and a "cult leader"? I suspect that others here would call that into doubt, but what does it matter? It's some weak-ass shit, stop up your inner dialogue and quit with the self-pity and have some fun. When you stop your inner dialogue you'll stop being so weak-minded. Do all of the practices, who cares whether it's "real" whatever "real" means.
If everything out there is fake, why don't you just leap in whole-heartedly and discard all the other worthless beliefs. Don't compare Castaneda to anything else and just do the work. One ounce of action outweighs 100 ounces of deliberation.
The Art of Dreaming seems to stimulate and/or grant gifts of Intent. If so, then what you describe is likely meant as temporary motivation for you to practice the techniques available to learn from here. Lucid Dreaming is an easy but dangerous trap to fall into. Not only for the risk of pretending. It is a time-sink. Lucid Dreams can be notoriously generative and manifold. The more attention spent on them, the more information that will be generated to consider.
I suggest you read this post and then practice Silence: https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/1cmbzym/delusional_lucid_dreaming/
well, it's not like i have anything better to do with my time while i'm asleep.
(joke!)
will check that post out.
Since you read the Art of Dreaming, you know that only certain dreams are important. You're adding personal interpretation to say it is lucid dreaming being practiced. The advantage of Castaneda is that the instructions are clear instead of speaking in vague metaphors like everywhere else is wont to do. You managed looking at your hands once, but has it been happening since?
Before I found this subreddit, I saw, floating in the air, dozens of sparkles in my room, while wide awake and completely sober, that remained in position as if they existed, aka moving around them was perfectly natural and easy to do. When I tried touching them, my fingers went through them, though. After that, I decided I needed to explore more, and found this subreddit.
yeah. this dream felt important. not only because i found my hands but because of how it happened. i got a call on my phone, i picked it up, someone/thing spoke to me in a language i could not understand. then suddenly i felt like i woke up from that point. immediately after that i looked down and found my hands.
ever since then i've had a keen ability to lucid dream, for want of a better term. i found my hands many times since then but i don't really try to do it anymore. instead, i generally focus on exploring the dream world consciously and deliberately, looking about, exploring, questioning the characters i meet, instead of trying to find my hands. but i have that same feeling. i can very deliberately navigate the dreamscape. i am conscious and in control, not just being carried along.
there are times where the frequency of the lucid dreaming scared me and there are certain recurring characters that kind of scare me for some reason. sometimes characters unknown but other times loved ones who have passed but i wonder if it's really them or not. i just don't know. but lucid dreaming generally scares me now, it's not a welcome experience.
anyway, while i've had some extremely vivid lucid dreaming experiences but nothing remarkable during the ordinary wakeful state so far. that i still to experience. i will try silence.
Silence is core :) Dan says that most people who get into dreaming end up mopey, so maybe have more fun and just focus on waking dreaming for now.
It's not exactly dismissing, it runs counter to intent. Combining systems means that you are following the intent of Aleister Crowley and the sorcerers of Ancient Mexico (aka two masters). To me, it makes perfect intuitive sense to discard thoughts of other occult systems purely on that basis.
which master do you follow now, and why?
Which one do you think?
the sorcerers of Ancient Mexico.
Like honestly, I am sometimes confused by this "why" question, but I suppose that is because I was 100% atheist before I came into this. I had zero interest in magic at all. As far as I'm concerned, there is no "why" for me.
sorcery chose you, in other words? it wasn't something you actively sought?
Yep! Seems that way.
i kind of feel like the opposite, i suppose. i seek it but it wants nothing to do with me.
Then forget all the rest of it! Who cares about worthless crap if it doesn't help you! I also suspect that your internal dialogue will act up on hearing that. But the question is whether you want to "identify" with something or whether you want to experience magic.
Perhaps practitioners of real magic (i.e. possibly here) can cast real magic spells over their forums / points of meeting, which only lets those with the right intent find them. I think that would explain a lot, personally
Thank you for your input 🙏 are you a practitioner of Castaneda’s practices too?
Haven't gotten so far yet
This is my mystical experience.
But you don't need any of that. I just gaze at the ceiling and the air becomes filled with foggy images while stone cold sober (for hours at a time). It makes me so happy that I can cry haha.
Maybe someday if I abuse enough acid. 😉
But I've never done any drugs except weed... You don't need drugs, you just need to have inner silence to move your assemblage point... Are you afraid?
That's basically the whole point of the bornless ritual.
But I don't need a ritual, and neither do you. You don't need drugs, you don't need weird invocations, you don't need anything else except inner silence. You can literally discard all thoughts of comparison between magical systems and you'll be better off.
You first started by implying that I do acid, and now you are terrified to admit that, maybe, just maybe Castaneda was right, and all you need is inner silence.
I wasn't implying anything of you. Merely making the observation I have had similar experiences through different routes. I'm not as close minded as you assume me to be.
Same route. Your assemblage point shifted. Here we just cut to the chase and chop off all the rest of the BS. Why is it that me lying there and silencing my internal dialogue is enough, but you need some elaborate ritual for the same thing? All you need is silence.
I'd also like an explanation for your comment about acid usage then if you weren't implying anything of me. You said that you've had similar experiences using the bornless ritual? Were you on acid at the time?
I've done it both sober and on acid.
Okay, I'll accept that. But yeah, as I said, you don't need any of it except silence. That's all there is to it. If you don't need anything other than silence, and the purpose of this subreddit is to pragmatically apply Carlos Castaneda, then maybe consider looking around at the stuff and taking it on, or moving on to another place.
I was going through my occult journal and found an experience I wrote about that was very similar to what you were describing. Long story short I basically went through some trauma that caused me to stare off in the space until I started hallucinating.
" I stared off into space with tears rolling down my face. It was a
full moon that night and I remember having a vision of myself
flying above the clouds and crying to the moon with no
expression. I could still see the room in front of me while also
having this vision in my mind at the same time. It's one of the
few instances where I've experienced physical and astral sight
overlapping each other. Later that night I was laying in his
guest bedroom, staring up at the ceiling. I could see a
spooky face in my third eye. It's like that scene in The exorcist
where the demon's face pops out of the shadows.
and you can do that (but happy instead of trauma) for hours per day, daily.
You just need to learn to silence your internal dialogue, and more things will be happening to you.
The reason this subreddit is "exploring" is that you are doing it daily for long periods of time.
Have more faith in yourself... I think that's all I can say...
I still can't figure out if I accidentally made the scrying mirror levitate on my own or if it was the demon I was conjuring.
I mean... a one-time experience will never explain anything :))) it just doesn't work that way for anything else in life, but somehow it works that way in religions, gotta do things a lot to know for sure.
Aiming to be silent all the time will free you up!